Gordon Ramsay puts on brave face after accusations of affair

Gordon Ramsay posed for pictures with his wife yesterday after allegations emerged that he has been having an affair with a 'professional mistress.'

Gordon Ramsay put on a show of unity with his wife TanaPhoto: NATIONAL NEWS

By Duncan Gardham and Richard Savill

11:38PM GMT 23 Nov 2008

Ramsay, wearing blue jeans, a black hooded top and trainers, got out of a chauffeur-driven silver Mercedes, put his arm around Tana, his wife of 12 years, and smiled for waiting cameramen.

The couple both posed for pictures before entering their £3 million home in Wandsworth, south London, as Ramsay told photographers: "It's time for Sunday lunch. I'm starving."

His press spokesman said the couple had spent Saturday night at a friend's birthday party and Sunday morning shopping for Christmas presents at Harrods, apparently unconcerned about the allegations.

Friends say Ramsay, the Michelin-starred chef, admits to knowing the woman who made the allegations, who claims she has an "international public relations career and jet-set lifestyle" from her home in south Wales, but also runs a support group called "mistresses anonymous" and has written a "handbook for the other woman".

But a tabloid newspaper has claimed that they slept with each other twice in the last fortnight, once at the Marriott Hotel on Grosvenor Square, Mayfair where Ramsay has a restaurant and once at an apartment nearby.

On the second occasion the woman was seen visiting a sex shop in Soho beforehand to buy the legal drug amyl nitrite and Ramsay is said to have spent an hour and a quarter in her £390-a-night Mayfair hotel room.

Ramsay's father-in-law, Christopher Hutcheson, has an apartment in Mayfair and is a director of Gordon Ramsay Holdings, the £60m company in which Ramsay himself has a 69 per cent share.

It is said that Ramsay, 42, first met the woman, who is in her late 30s, in 2001 at the Chinawhite nightclub in London.

They first had sex a few weeks later, the newspaper said, and continued an affair after she moved to Los Angeles in 2003.

The affair is said to have finished in 2004 but Ramsay contacted her on a visit with his family to see David and Victoria Beckham in Los Angeles in August 2007.

In October that year she published a book in America called 'Having an Affair – a handbook for the other woman' and appeared on the Oprah Winfrey chat show.

In the book she wrote: "A friend of mine was having an affair with a world-famous TV chef, well-known on both sides of the Atlantic for both his bad language and his good food.

"He complained to my friend that things weren't going well between him and his wife and that he was being made to sleep in the basement.

"Later that day, whilst passing a news stand, she was flabbergasted to see her MM's [married man's] face all over a top glossy weekly magazine, along with his wife and the latest addition to their growing brood. The article focused on 'how strong' their marriage was."

In the same book she offered advice on preparing a romantic evening meal for mistresses lacking in culinary skills: "Aim to practice some extra special sexual techniques in the bedroom afterwards. He will soon forget the absence of that bouquet garni in your coq au vin. Trust me!"

But she returned to Wales in February and in an interview around the same time she said: "My only regret is wasting time on the wrong guys."

She added that mistresses have to accept a bitter truth: "The reason he won't leave his wife is because he loves her more than you."

Ramsay has been married to Tana, 33, for 12 years and they have a daughter aged 10, twins aged eight and another daughter aged six.

She was a Montessori nursery teacher when they met and he has described her as "the only woman who can turn me on…Tana is my wife, my lover and the person I want in my bed and in my arms every night."

His wife and children have featured in his programme, the F-word, and he was named Celebrity Father of the Year in 2006 and the Ramsays were Celebrity Family of the Year in 2007.

Friends said yesterday there were "holes in the story" and he felt he had been set up.